Automating the art of selling ads helped Denver’s Choozle raise $4.1 million in its Series A round of funding, the company planned to announce Wednesday.

Choozle co-founder and CEO Andrew Fischer said the company has grown rapidly since pivoting from a data and survey company two years ago. Already, funds have been used to hire more people, and Choozle has more than doubled its staff, to 15, since last month. It’s also moving to a more spacious headquarters in April and has opened offices in New York and San Francisco.

“The automation really allows any advertiser to get access to the tools of the big boys,” Fischer said. “We call it ‘Programmatic for the people.’ “

What he’s talking about is a new form of targeted advertising that takes users’ demographics, interests, gender and other details and shows them an ad they would be interested in.

“One thousand people looking at the same website could be looking at a different ad,” he said.

Programmatic ad spending was expected to grow 137 percent last year and reach $10 billion, according to eMarketer, a market research firm. A big chunk of that was mobile ads.

Choozle says it plugs into major consumer-data sites such as Experian that track people and their preferences. Then it offers a self-service area on its site for companies that want to advertise to specific users and groups. Choozle charges a subscription fee based on audience size, starting at $199 a month.

Choozle initially built a business on creating consumer surveys. But it found it difficult to scale into a larger company.

“The early brands liked the voting results. It’s neat that 42 percent liked the banana cake flavor. But who are these people? The ability to layer data was what interested (customers),” Fischer said.

Choozle, which earlier raised $1.7 million, pivoted away from surveys in March. In the last quarter of 2014, it saw a 71 percent month-over-month growth in customers. It now has more than 100 customers, including Cricket Wireless, Gaiam and SendGrid. The latest round was led by Great Oaks Venture Capital.

Doing business in Denver since late 2018, San Francisco-based marketing tech firm Iterable is taking part in its first Denver Startup Week. Not only is it an event sponsor, but it taking part in the startup crawl program, showing off its new office, and the Startup Week job fair Wednesday night.